Move to IRL exhausting for ex-Champ Car teams

EDMONTON - Brian Lisles has been involved in motor racing for
40 years and he can say without hesitation that this is the worst
one ever.

EDMONTON - Brian Lisles has been involved in motor racing for 40 years and he can say without hesitation that this is the worst one ever.

Lisles is the general manager of the Newman/Haas/Lanigan team that moved from Champ Car to the Indy

Racing League when the two series merged this spring and his days off have been rare since the unification was announced in February.

But he's not alone.

Few of the N-H-L crew members have had any more time off and that's a similar story with the six Champ Car teams that made the move.

"Personally, I work probably 12 hours a day, six days a week, some weeks we work seven days," Lisles said during a rare break at Watkins Glen. "To come here, we crashed a car in Richmond (the Saturday before). Monday we worked 13, 14 hours. Tuesday, the cars had to be in the truck. We started at seven Tuesday morning and put the cars in the truck about 2:30 Wednesday morning."

Then the crew grabbed a few hours of sleep, packed their bags and the rest of the equipment and drove Wednesday to Watkins Glen, where they had to get set up for practice Thursday.

"It's brutal, absolutely brutal."

The biggest problem is time. The unification was late and the Champ Car teams didn't receive the Indy cars until about three weeks before the season-opening race at Homestead, Fla. The Dallara was a car they had never seen and in some cases they arrived in pieces.

The teams that went full time into Indy -- N-H-L, Dale Coyne, KV Technology, HVM (formerly Minari USA) and Conquest -- had little time to get acquainted with the new cars. Their drivers had limited time to test the cars and few had raced ovals in recent years.

On top of that spare parts were not in abundance, making repairs after crashes even more frustrating. And the IndyCar series had few breaks in the season.

"The other enemy that time produced was we had a number of employees who had been with us for a long time who decided the lack of personal time in the schedule was not for them. So we had a lot of people leave."

Replacing them on the eve of the season was difficult. Rumors have floated around the circuit that crew members were quitting because they had a choice -- quit or face divorce.

"I'm sure that's true," said Lisles. "Anyone who is married with a family and does this professionally, it's a significant stress for all of them."

One Champ Car team that didn't go into Indy full time is Pacific Coast Motorsports, where life has been noticeably easier. Team owner Tyler Tadevic was in the midst of negotiations with new sponsors that weren't finalized until three weeks into the season, so they debuted at Indianapolis, ran at Milwaukee and Texas and then sat out two races before Watkins Glen.

"It became apparent to us that we maybe had to take some time at home and try to focus on the road courses because we weren't really learning an awful lot," said team manager Michael Harvey. "We were learning how not to do it, but we weren't really progressing as fast as we should have been ... so the smart thing was to stop and collect ourselves.

"This was a building year, 2009 is supposed to be our big year and if this is a building year let's not burn ourselves out, let's learn what we can and put it into next year."

And, Harvey said, he knew that if he worked his crew until midnight every night he would start losing them, just as other teams have.

"I have to maintain a certain level so people don't fall over dead. That's one of the hard things about the IndyCar series, with race after race week in, week out, it's difficult to maintain a happy balance with the staff."

The teams that entered full time were given certain benefits, including $1.3 million per car, to help with the transition. But that didn't give them the option of taking a break from the schedule.

By the time some of them even got to racing, the crews were already tired. Graham Rahal crashed in testing before the season-opening race and the N-H-L team had to totally rebuild the car. They missed the first race but Rahal won the next weekend, at St. Petersburg, Fla., in his IndyCar debut.

"We won the race with Graham and nobody even got a smile on their face, it was that tiring," remembers Lisles. "Everybody was just completely exhausted. You have to take the good with the bad in this business and this has been a bad year for all of us who swapped over. But everyone's trying to make an investment for the future."

Fortunately, there haven't been any major health problems, partly because the teams ensure the crews stay in good hotels where they can sleep when they get the chance and they're well fed at the track.

Still, the former Champ Car team members have basically lived at the track and their garages since early March, haven't spent near enough time at home with their families and certainly haven't had any time to enjoy the supposed fun benefits of auto racing.

It is a combination only the most dedicated would continue with.

That, said Lisles, is probably the only benefit the ex-Champ Car teams will get from this season.

"The only thing is that those individuals who stay with us after this season, we'll know are very committed to doing their job. That's the only benefit I can see."

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